Sandy Weill Biography & Net Worth

Sandy Weill Biography & Net Worth

Sandy Weill is a banker and philanthropist from America. He is best known for his time as the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup from 1998 until April 18, 2006, and October 1, 2003, respectively. More details are in the report below.

Early Life: Childhood, Education

Weill was born Sanford I. Weill on March 16, 1933, in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn, New York, United States. His parents, Max Weill and Etta Kalika, were Polish Jewish immigrants

He studied at P.S. 200 in Bensonhurst where he was brought up. He also studied at Peekskill Military School in Peekskill, New York, before advancing to Cornell University from which he graduated in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government.

Professional Life: Business career, Investments

Shortly after graduating from the university, Weill got his first employment position on Wall Street as a messenger for Bear Stearns. In 1956, he received his license to work as a broker at Bear Stearns. His only client after many weeks was his own mother, until Joan, his later-to-be wife, persuaded an ex-lover to open a brokerage account.

While still working at Bear Stearns, Weill met with Peter Potoma, Arthur L. Carter, and Roger Berlind, and they all combined to open a firm in 1960 which they named Carter, Berlind, Potoma & Weill. Weill served as the Chairman of their firm from 1965 to 1984, and under his leadership, it completed more than 15 acquisitions to become the second-ranked leading securities brokerage firm in the United States. The company had its name changed many times along the way. But nothing would stop it from recording capital of more than $250 million, trailing only Merrill Lynch as the biggest securities broker in the country.

In 1981, Weill sold his brokerage firm to American Express for $915 million in stock. The following year, he established the National Academy Foundation and also the Academy of Finance with the aim of educating high school students. In 1983, he began heading American Express Co. as its president and also started serving as the chairman and chief executive officer of Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, American Express’s insurance subsidiary.

At the age of 52, in August 1985, Sandy Weill resigned from his positions at the American Express Company. He attempted to become the chief executive officer of BankAmerica Corp. by persuading Control Data Corporation to erase a troubled subsidiary, a consumer finance company known as Commercial Credit. Weill paid $7 million for the acquisition of Commercial Credit in 1986 and was able to help the company complete a successful IPO after a period of layoffs and reorganization. In 1987, he purchased Gulf Insurance and paid $1.5 billion for Primerica the following year. He also bought Drexel Burnham Lambert’s brokerage outlets in 1989. In 1992, Weill paid $722 million to acquire a 27 percent share of Travelers Insurance which had several issues owing to bad real estate investments.

He paid American Express the sum of $1.2 billion to get back his old brokerage in 1993. In 1997, he purchased Salomon Inc. for over $9 billion in stock.

Travelers Group and Citicorp completed a merger on October 8, 1998 to become Citigroup. Weill served as the chairman and chief executive of Citigroup from 1998 until April 18, 2006, and October 1, 2003, respectively. In 2003, he sold 5.6 million shares of Citigroup back to the firm for nearly $264 million.

Achievements: Awards & Honors

Weill was named CEO of the year by FinancialWorld Magazine In 1998. He was also named CEO of the year by ChiefExecutive Magazine in 2002.

In May 2003, he was awarded the Baruch Medal for Business & Civic Leadership by Baruch College for his accomplishments in business and his contribution to public education.

Weill has been awarded honorary degrees by Sonoma State University, The New School, University of New Haven, Hofstra University, and Howard University.

Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, appointed him a member of his Education Reform Commission.

He received a New York State Governor’s Art Award in 1997. In the same year, Awards Council member General Colin Powell presented Weill with the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award.

Sandy Weill and his wife, Joan, were awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy Award in 2009. He later received the Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence in 2015.

Personal Life: Family, Wife, Children

Sandy Weill has been married to Joan Mosher since June 20, 1955. They’re the parents of two children and four grandchildren. Their children are Jessica Weill Bibliowicz and Marc Weill.

Weill and his wife live in Greenwich, Connecticut. He is a devoted promoter of classical music in the United States

Philanthropy

Weill served as a Trustee of Cornell University for many years and instituted the Weill Cornell Medical College in 1998. He orchestrated a donation of $400 million to the University, of which he and Joan his wife contributed $250 million. In June 2007, he instituted the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at the University, and donated $100 million to Weill Cornell through the Weill Family Foundation on September 10, 2013.

He collaborated with the New York City Board of Education to institute a program that brought about the Academy of Finance in 1980, which trains secondary school students for professions in financial services. He serves as chairman and founder of the NAF, which supervises over a hundred thousand students in more than 600 career-themed academies of health sciences, finance, engineering, hospitality and tourism, and information technology, in thirty-five states, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia.

Weill also serves as the Chairman of the Carnegie Hall Board. He has been Chairman of the Trustees of Carnegie Hall Board since 1991. For Weill’s 70 years birthday, Carnegie Hall raised $60 million in one day through a donation of $30 million match by Weill for the Weill Music Institute. Weill also serves as the chairman of Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center Board of Advisors. He is also a director at Lang Lang’s International Music Foundation.

Weill donated $5 million to the construction of the Joan and Sanford Weill Hall in 2006. He and his wife have been co-chairs of the yearly Louis Marshall Award Dinner for most of the last decade (2000–2010).

The businessman and his wife donated $12 million to Sonoma State University in March 2011. They also donated $10 million to the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel the same year.

In 2016 the husband and wife also made another donation to a charitable cause, this time, a $185 million gift to the University of California, San Francisco. They also gave about $106 million to the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Washington in 2019.

Sandy Weill Net Worth: Salary, Income Sources, Assets

The American banker, financier, businessman, and philanthropist, Sandy Weill, is said to own a net worth of $1 billion.  He would easily be worth more, but the staunch philanthropist has donated most of his wealth to education, music, and medicine. He is probably best known for his time as the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup from 1998 until April 18, 2006, and October 1, 2003, respectively, but at the peak of his career, this man made multiple investments and acquisitions which brought him and his establishments lots of money.

In 2010, he and his wife Joan paid approximately $150 million for a 362-acre estate in Sonoma County, California. They reside in Weill’s $80 million home in Greenwich, Connecticut.